Police in Hollywood, north of Miami, opened a criminal investigation on Wednesday after finding three dead patients at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hill, a facility that had been operating with little or no air conditioning.

The spokesman for the facility, Ron Bartlett, said that after the air conditioning stopped, workers continually gave residents water and ice.

The nursing home eventually evacuated all of its patients Wednesday morning at the order of the responding crews.

"If you go back into the 1930s and the 1940s, and you take a look, we've had storms over the years that have been bigger than this", Trump said.

The complaint asks for the preservation of all video and photographs taken in the nursing home from September 8, the day before South Florida was expected to start experiencing increased winds from Hurricane Irma, to September 13. "We have other patients in critical care", he said, though he didn't elaborate.

"The scene on site when I got there was chaotic", said Randy Katz, Memorial's emergency services director. "What we have been generally treating is dehydration, severe respiratory conditions and heat exhaustion".

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Jeff Nova, whose 71-year-old mother Gail Nova was among the deceased, said he didn't have any information about what happened. "It's just bureaucratic paper shuffling", he said.

Some 3.1 million homes and businesses, representing close to one-third of the state's population, were without power on Thursday. And also the nursing home was previously charged with violating federal rules on its power systems and a faulty generator and alarm. As a precaution, Hollywood police officers were checking on the 42 other assisted-living facilities and nursing homes in the area.

Facing a situation that was out of control, doctors and fire officials ultimately made a decision to transfer all the patients to the hospital, where dozens were treated for respiratory distress, dehydration and heat exhaustion, officials said.

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Calls to the owner and other officials at the Hollywood home were not immediately returned, but the facility's administrator, Jorge Carballo, said in a statement that it was "cooperating fully with relevant authorities to investigate the circumstances that led to this unfortunate and tragic outcome".

"That's why we are camped out there and doing whatever we can to assist them in this process". The company met with officials in Broward County in early March, he said.

The home said in a statement that the hurricane had knocked out a transformer that powered the AC.

Relatives who have family members in the facility have started to gather outside the two-story gray building that is situated among a cluster of medical facilities and hospitals. The widow evacuated her Naples condominium with the help of police the day before the storm hit. He added that "I don't know what he's going to do".